Fence Canyon

This BLM area is the way to go if you want to ditch the crowds at Whites City and/or Guadalupe Mountains National Park. We showed up around noon on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. It took us a minute to verify this was it, as there is no signage - we Google mapped "Fence Canyon" which didn't take us right there (Use the Coordinates at the top of this Fence Canyon page). There was only one other camper, and a few tents showed up overnight.

When you cross the cattle guard, there's a site right there to the left, then roughly every tenth of a mile all the way up. We stayed 1 mile in, which overlooked the road up and a few of the other campsites. You can still see and hear highway 62 below, but not enough to notice or keep you awake. On the 2nd day, we ventured back another mile (past the oil operation) to find incredible sites overlooking canyons with no highway views or noise. Next time, we'll go straight to those sites, because I think it would also shield from the wind a little better - our site was at the top of the hill and the wind picked up in the evenings. We didn't move to them because we were already set up out front.

THE ROAD: The road is quite rocky, but definitely manageable. My Outback pulled our teardrop to the top with no issues, just have to go slow and navigate the washouts. My wife met me here and also made it to the top in her Jetta! We each made several trips up and down throughout our 2 night stay, at about 5-10 mph. It's worth noting that it was dry the entire time, not sue how it would look after a heavy rain. Enjoy your stay!

This was our first BLM experience and boy did we choose a good one to earn our stripes. We stayed for two weeknights at the end of March. It’s very easy to find right off the highway. When you first pull in there’s room for maybe 3 or 4 occupants max..depends on the size of everyone’s rig and how much privacy you need. A somewhat treacherous road extends up the mountain from there with level-ish spots along the way. When we pulled in there were already a good handful of other people camping, so we had to drive a bit to find an open spot. We found an open plateau area about .5 miles up and thanked god to have made it. This was by far the bumpiest road we’ve encountered before or since. We’re driving a rwd 20ft Sprinter Van. We did it, and I wouldn’t say we had trouble doing it, but the shaking really rattled me. I saw lots of other vehicles make it up way farther than us - little sedans, small RVs bigger than us. I wouldn’t do it with any size trailer. It’s basically a one lane road and there’s almost no opportunity to turn around. But besides all that! It was nice. If you get a spot to yourself it’s far enough away from the others that you have privacy even though it’s all open desert. Even though it’s right off the side of the road, the elevation got us a good deal away from the noise. I could still hear cars but it wasn’t loud. Our Tmobile service was great here. So I wouldn’t stay again but it’s just because I’m a pansy.

This spot is only so-so, we stayed here our first night in the area but found the BLM spots further south to be better.

The road up is REALLY rocky! We have a low-clearance van and are prone to trying roads we probably shouldn’t - - this road was borderline and while it ended up being ‘fine’, it made us more nervous than usual.

The sites themselves are also just ‘fine’. There is little privacy as it’s just a continuous uphill, though the spots are mostly level. It’s very exposed to the elements and there is a gas pipeline running along the side. The views are mostly of oil fields and you can see the fires burning all night. Not my cup of tea, personally.

Verizon was at 2-3 bars, but internet data was a bit slow at times

Overall, it’s ‘fine’ and in a pinch would stay again, but we found there are far better free options a few miles south of the caverns.

As others have mentioned it is a rocky road in. We didn’t have any issues but decided not to risk is and stopped at the first set of spots. 6 vans could comfortably fit nose in or one to two larger RVs could fit sideways.

It is a barren landscape but nice to get a bit of elevation.

1 bar Verizon LTE without booster, 2 bars with booster. Despite the slow signal we had good speeds.

We camped here in late January the night before going to Carlsbad Caverns. The convenience cannot be best especially for a free campsite.

As other reviewers have said, it was really windy. The ground was solid and we could only stake half our tent. We ended up taking the rain fly off halfway through the night and taking it down in the morning was a chore.

We are driving a low sedan and we’re able to get to the first site fairly easily but would not have wanted to go farther. The result was that we could hear some noise from the highway but not so much that we didn’t sleep.

Overall, it was a pretty place and would be good for an RV, I think but was far from ideal for tent camping.

We stayed in the 4th site, which was fairly level. However, there is a larger completely level site further up. We are in a 30ft camper and didn’t want to venture further up the road. It’s very rocky and had lots of areas where the road has been washed out. You have to be brave hearted and take it very slow. There’s not many places to turn around either. With that being said, we loved our stay! We only saw a couple other campers during our time there and we hiked 8 miles into the BLM land. It’s gorgeous! We got a visit from a game warden who was very nice and welcomed us to the area. It was nice to see someone patrolling the area. We would definitely camp there again!

We enjoyed our stay, but didn't know the condition of the road. We were towing our 22 foot Travel trailer and went a little further down (up) the road to get away from the highway noise. Everything went fine, but there are some rocky areas where you definitely need to watch your tire placement when towing a trailer. Where we were there wasnt much noise and we had a nice view.... And you can't get much closer to the caverns for free!

As some of the other reviews state- yes a little rough uphill drive getting in but doable. We made it fine with an expedition and 20ft travel trailer. Went to one of the furthest sites from the highway and we loved it. Came around 5pm in a Saturday and were the only ones here. Fire rings, amazing views, and even more amazing stars. 10 minutes from Carlsbad Caverns. On our way to the caverns we passed an RV park packed with people side by side on basically a parking lot and laughed because we had the best site in town and didn’t pay a cent! Highly recommend! Follow us on Instagram @redandrosie